The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has completely exited its Microsoft holding, selling its remaining 12.8 million shares for roughly $3.2 billion, according to economictimes.indiatimes.com. The sale, executed over the past two weeks, ends a 25-year investment relationship between the foundation and the software giant.
The foundation’s trust offloaded the shares through a series of block trades managed by Goldman Sachs, the report said. The shares represented the last 1.3% of Microsoft stock held by the trust, whose proceeds fund global health, education and poverty-alleviation programmes. Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft in 1975, stepped down from the board in 2020 and has been steadily reducing his stake; the foundation’s trust had already pared its position from 103 million shares in 2014 to the final tranche.
The divestiture removes one of the largest overhangs on Microsoft stock and frees the foundation to diversify its $75 billion endowment. Comparable exits include the Walton Family Foundation’s gradual sale of Walmart shares and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s shift away from Meta stock. For Microsoft, the move eliminates a long-term, price-insensitive holder at a time when the company is investing heavily in AI infrastructure and cloud capacity, sectors that now drive more than 50% of its revenue.
Proceeds from the sale will be redeployed into public-health initiatives in India, Nigeria and Ethiopia, the foundation told economictimes.indiatimes.com. Its next capital-allocation update is expected in October, when the trust files its quarterly 13-F. Investors will watch whether the foundation increases exposure to Indian pharmaceutical and vaccine makers or to emerging-market exchange-traded funds.